Country Financial News

Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) has started discussions with local manufacturers of rubber gloves to look into their complaints about poor quality products that are getting dumped in the country. Domestic glovemakers alleged that gloves from countries like Thailand, Malaysia and China are being dumped in India under different non-medical product codes. The department has been contemplating issuance of quality control orders in consultation with the Bureau of Indian Standards and has already invited comments from stakeholders on the matter.

Germany’s quarrelsome governing coalition has reached an agreement on details of the country’s 2025 budget

AM/NS India — the joint venture between ArcelorMittal and Japan's Nippon Steel — will be looking at opportunities for acquisitions coming its way, said Dilip Oommen, the chief executive officer. It is one of the few steelmakers in the country that has grown by a series of deals in the past few years. «For sure we will be looking at (it), if there are any good opportunities coming our way, we are definitely interested and we will study it,» he told ET in an exclusive interaction. «It has to be viable,» he emphasised.

Packaged foods makers Nestle and PepsiCo are in talks with Godrej Agrovet, one of the country's largest producers of palm oil, to buy refined palm oil locally for some of their biggest brands such as Maggi instant noodles and Lay's potato chips, executives directly aware of the developments said. Multinationals are sourcing locally amid rising global prices of the commodity as well as logistics costs and heightened scrutiny on the quality of edible oils by the government under the Food Safety & Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). They also aim to cut short months-long import buying cycles and circumvent any potential supply disruptions amid continued global geopolitical turmoil. So far, Nestle and PepsiCo have sourced palm oil primarily from Indonesia and Malaysia for Indian operations.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is out with a string of new proposals on food prices, taxes, housing and medical costs that she says will empower the middle class

Former President Donald Trump owns more than $1 million worth of cryptocurrency and up to $250,000 in gold bars along with the portfolio of golf courses and real estate properties that have made him a billionaire

Public spaces like hospitals have been found to be unsafe for women. What's more, the authorities' ability/willingness to go beyond lip-service and the motions has been brought into question.

rape and murder of a young doctor at a medical college in Kolkata is that India is unsafe for Indians. And a rattled and well-heeled middle-class once again is mulling the supposedly easy way out: let's send our children abroad to study, so that they can live in a safer country and prosper. This points to a basic weakness of both social media and the chatterati-knee-jerk reactions. It is true that the much-tomtommed assertion that Kolkata and West Bengal are «safe» for women has been conclusively disproved by the countless stories finally coming out about unreported crimes, triggered by the RG Kar incident. Though Bengal had been comforted by data collected by the National Crime Records Bureau (provided by the state police) showing that Kolkata is the safest city, clearly rapes and murders occur there as much as anywhere else in India. But is the alternative to abandon India? And go where? To the US, where this year has already seen the deaths of more than a dozen Indian students? Where there have already been nearly 300 mass shootings in 2024? Where immigration and 'migrants' are a sore issue?

Manchester United will play Fulham in the first match of Premier League for 2024-25 season. The inaugural game will be played at Old Trafford. Erik Ten Hag's Manchester United won FA Cup but lost to Manchester City in FA Community Shield 2024 final. Manchester United versus Fulham Premier League match is scheduled to kick off at 3 pm (ET) on Friday, August 16. Premier League match will be live telecast on USA Network and live streamed on NBC.com. One can also watch the soccer game between Manchester United and Fulham on Fubo TV which offers free trial. Manchester United have signed Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui from Bayern Munich, the Premier League club announced Tuesday. Fees for the pair were not disclosed by the English giants, but British media reports estimated the duo had arrived at Old Trafford for a combined £60 million ($77 million, 70 million euros).

Kashmiri migrants introduced during the recent Lok Sabha polls will be in place for the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls as well, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said on Friday. He also lauded the democratic spirit of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Talking about the special arrangements made for the Kashmiri migrants during the Lok Sabha polls, Kumar said those relaxations will continue. «You may also remember that for Kashmiri migrants, special arrangements were made. We simplified the process, we relaxed Form M and there were some cumbersome processes that required authorisation, which were converted to self-attestation,» the CEC said at a press conference to announce the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election.

India has initiated an anti-dumping probe into the import of hot rolled steel products from Vietnam following a complaint by a domestic manufacturer. The commerce ministry's investigation arm Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) is probing the alleged dumping of 'hot rolled flat products of alloy or non-alloy steel'. According to the DGTR notification, Indian Steel Association has filed an application on behalf of domestic producers — JSW Steel Ltd and ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India Ltd — seeking initiation of an anti-dumping investigation on imports from Vietnam. The applicants have alleged that the product is being imported at dumped prices which is causing material injury to the domestic industry.

Lucknow. The conference would be held with the theme «Sashakt aur Surakahit Bharat: Transforming the Armed Forces' (String and Secure India: Transforming the Armed Forces'). The first day of the conference would be addressed by the Chief of Defence Staff, where the topmost defence officer in the country is expected to address the military commanders on how the wars of the future will be fought and how the Indian armed forces will tackle the security challenges through transformation into Theatre Commands, defence sources told ANI.

Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goel on Friday asserted that the force was not trying to shield anyone and it tried to be as transparent as possible in the probe into the alleged rape and murder of a doctor at a state-run hospital here. Addressing a press conference, Goel also admitted that despite «sufficient security presence», the police did not expect the protesting crowd to turn violent outside RG Kar Hospital premises in the early hours of August 15, and were initially caught off-guard when a deputy commissioner-ranked officer got injured. The CP said that Kolkata Police has handed over all evidence, including videographed post-mortem to the CBI, which is investigating the case upon orders of the Calcutta High Court. «We are not shielding anyone, and police tried to be as transparent as possible in our probe. We have handed over all evidence related to the case to the CBI. Have faith in the central probe agency,» he said.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra Friday said atrocities against women in West Bengal, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh have shaken the country, and asserted that repeated leniency in cases, political protection to accused and granting of bail or parole to convicts let down women. When government statistics show 86 rapes taking place every day, from whom should women expect protection? she posed in a post in Hindi on 'X'. «Atrocities against women in Kolkata, Bihar, Uttarakhand and UP have shaken the entire country. At this time, women across the country are in grief and anger,» Priyanka Gandhi said on X.

mpox cases are now being reported outside Africa too. Sweden has confirmed its first case of mpox on Thursday just as Pakistan reported three cases. China's customs administration said it will monitor people and goods entering the country for mpox for the next six months. Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic said Thursday it was ready to produce up to 10 million doses of its vaccine targeting mpox by 2025, The WHO’s declaration of mpox as a global health emergency aims at galvanizing action and resources to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Immigration tops the list of issues that Britons consider most important for the first time since 2016 — when Britain voted to leave the European Union — following riots this month targeting Muslims and migrants, pollster Ipsos said on Friday. Just over a third of Britons (34%) named immigration as the biggest issue, ahead of healthcare, on 30%, the economy on 29%, crime on 25% and inflation on 20%, the August edition of the monthly Ipsos Issues Index showed. For 11% of those polled race relations was the top issue.

Narendra Modi on Friday spoke with Bangladesh government's interim head and Noble Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus and extended India's full support in restoration of peace in the neighbouring country. In a post on X, PM Modi said that Yunus has assured protection, safety and security of Hindus and all minorities in Bangladesh. After the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, who resigned and fled to India on August 5 amid massive protests over a controversial job quota system, reports have surfaced that Bangladesh experienced a surge in violence against the Hindu community.

R N Agarwal, regarded as the father of Agni missiles in the country, passed away here. He was 84. Agarwal, a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, died on Thursday following mild old-age related ailments, DRDO sources said. He had served as the Agni programme director and also as the director of ASL (Advanced Systems Laboratory) in Hyderabad.

Pakistan government has confirmed that it was upgrading its «web management system» to cope with cyber security threats amid speculation about the installation of a so-called 'firewall' that could be leading to internet disruptions in the country, according to a media report on Friday. Millions of people across Pakistan have been facing trouble accessing internet services for some time now due to limited connectivity, particularly while using mobile data in some regions. So far, official stakeholders in Pakistan have either been feigning ignorance in response to public outcry and media queries, or claiming that the problems were because of telecom and internet service providers, or even Meta.

The companies, in a filing disclosed Thursday, have asked the Commerce Department to apply the duties right away, amid a surge in imports from Vietnam and Thailand. An existing trade case already poses the risk of anti-dumping and countervailing duties, but the new filing raises the prospect of duties being imposed even before a final decision in the case. If imports have surged during a trade investigation, the government can determine that “critical circumstances” exist — a finding that paves the way for such retroactive tariffs. Companies importing panels and cells would need to post cash deposits while awaiting a final decision in the trade case.

Moscow ministers and the nation’s Central Bank are discussing a plan to “create” Russian crypto exchanges, as the country continues to pivot to cryptoassets.